Knugg Rally

Knugg Rally is one my favorite games I created for Superdudes, for a variety of reasons. Try it for yourself and see!

In Knugg Rally, the player takes part in a great race throughout the known and unknown universe. There are three circuits to race on, each consisting of seven tracks, and five cars to choose from (each with Ikea-inspired names). From left to right: Agresso, Stun-V, Mentat, Axcel, and Vortek

Players must beat the AI car in each race to advance to the next track. Rocket powerups, turbo powerups, checkpoints and incredible jumps keep things interesting.

Each circuit is defined by a tileset consisting of 15 tiles. The tiles are dynamically manipulated in-game to create all the different road sections needed. This technique saves on download time for the player, but demands that the tiles be able to fit together perectly when rotated in different configurations. Antonio's tile artwork is amazing, and gives the game its soul.

The game engine is highly optimized. Although Flash is ubiquitous on the web, getting a good framerate for a demanding game like Knugg Rally is a nontrivial task. Flash is designed primarily to display vector images, but it does so very inefficiently: as a result, all images in Knugg Rally (except for the cars and skidmarks) are actually done as bitmaps, which increases the download size of the game but gives it the necessary performance.

The tiles for the Black Hole City circuit show a futuristic city balanced precariously on the edge of a black hole, bathed in eternal night.

One of the most difficult design tasks for Knugg Rally was tuning the opponent AI. There was a fine line between making the opponent car too easy and too hard. Each track has a different AI setting, making the game more difficult as the player progresses.

Here are some tiles from the Elleg'Drak Ruins circuit, depicting a race amidst the ruins of an alien civilization.

Antonio's original sketches of the cars included drivers.

The final cars all had cockpits instead of drivers, because during the actual race they are so small that the driver detail is not visible.

To give you an idea of the incredible attention to detail that Antonio put into the tiles, here's a view of one of the Black Hole City tiles featuring a rocketship. To create the tile, Antonio first modelled the rocket in 3D, then integrated it into the tile while preserving the look of the tileset.

The track editor was a vital part of the production process. Without it there would have been no way to create the kinds of complicated tracks I had in mind for the game.

Here is a view of an intermediate level track in the Level Editor. On this track, the player has the option to duck into side alleys to pick up bonus points and powerups, at the risk of falling behind the AI car.

Knugg Rally proved to be such a popular game that the developer did a reskinned version for Shockwave.com, another online gaming site. Rocket Rally uses many of the same fonts, graphics, and sound effects as the original Knugg Rally, making it only a partial reskin. In this side-by-side comparison, the contrast between Antonio's stylish, bright artwork and Rocket Rally's garrish graphics is quite striking.

Here's a closeup of the Knugg Rally clone.

Knugg Rally was supposed to be a simple reskin of an existing game called Oversteer, but quickly grew into something much more. The basic game engine was rewritten from scratch three times, and a complete track editor was created to assist production.

Knugg Rally Credits

Flash Programmer: Chris Rhodes
Game Designer, Producer: Tom Jacobson
Game Art, UI Art: Antonio Sanchez

Sound and Music: Antonio Sanchez